Geographic information systems (GIS) allow geographic data to be presented visually, such as in a map view. Information about pipelines, such as the route of the pipeline, may be stored in a GIS. A GIS generally stores pipeline information using 2-dimensional (2D) coordinates. The GIS locates pipeline information using m-values, which provide locations as linear offsets from known coordinates. M-values use dynamic segmentation to locate assets. However the dynamic segmentation process s has large computation overhead making the managing of large datasets difficult. In order to process the large datasets generally associated with pipelines, the datasets are often preprocessed in order to cull a large portion of the data. Further, the use of m-values and dynamic segmentation often fails to provide accurate asset location, especially when applied to 3-dimensional (3D) topological data.
Legacy 2D GIS data can be converted to 3D coordinates, allowing pipeline assets to be located precisely in 3D. The 3D pipeline data may allow more precise locating of pipeline assets along a pipeline route.